The growing number of large form factor mobile devices such as the iPad has revolutionized mobile media consumption leading to revolutionary initiatives such as “TV Everywhere™” (TVE) with a mandate to make premium content available on a wide range of devices with great diversity in capabilities. This type of distribution, sometimes known as “Over-The-Top” (OTT) distribution, has underscored the need for a new and more robust trust model that builds on a 2-part trust model of user authentication and device identification and can offer the same level of content protection that content owners have had in the closed Consumer Electronics ecosystems of the past. The added level of protection can enable publishers to fully realize the potential for content distribution through this new open ecosystem of devices.
Content protection is challenging in mobile devices for a number of reasons. Mobile devices do not uniformly support Digital Rights Management (DRM) standards. In particular, most mobile devices do not currently support the most comprehensive form of content protection, the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) V2.0 DRM standard. Mobile devices also vary in their CPU performance and memory capacity. An additional complication is the need to support multiple modes of delivery required in the mobile environment, such as live streaming, watching short video segments, rentals, or media download for watching later.
Current media protection schemes depend on sending the license information in-band with the media or using a pre-distributed license key in the media viewing device. Examples are Playready, WMDRM, Widevine, and Flash Access. However, TVE requires that the rights are transferable across devices in a seamless manner.